Arrested Development

No unanimated sitcom ever packed its jokes as tightly as Arrested Development: this was comedy so dense and hard it could scratch a diamond. Creator Mitch Hurwitz assembled a Delta Force-level squad of character actors to tell the story of the marvelously dysfunctional Bluth family, forced to get off the gravy train and walk after their kleptocratic patriarch is busted for corporate crime. Over three seasons, AD became a sharp satire of everything from the Enron scandal to the war in Iraq, but its prickly comedy had a sweet emotional center. A marvel of wordplay and layered comedy, it will be the measuring stick of sitcoms for years to come.